Your View: The truth of Obama's Mideast policy is hidden

Monday

Dec 31, 2012 at 12:01 AM

In 2011, President Obama sold war of aggression as pre-emptive humanitarian intervention. He claimed that he prevented a massacre in Benghazi, Libya, but it's fact, not a claim, that Obama-supported gangs committed massacres in Bani Walid, Sirte and Tripoli while NATO bombing and racist Misrata gangs wiped out Tawergha, a town of perhaps 30,000 Libyan blacks. Obama wasn't protecting Libyans; he was doing regime change.

ARTHUR F. BETHEA

In 2011, President Obama sold war of aggression as pre-emptive humanitarian intervention. He claimed that he prevented a massacre in Benghazi, Libya, but it's fact, not a claim, that Obama-supported gangs committed massacres in Bani Walid, Sirte and Tripoli while NATO bombing and racist Misrata gangs wiped out Tawergha, a town of perhaps 30,000 Libyan blacks. Obama wasn't protecting Libyans; he was doing regime change.

Obama's recent warning to Syria's government that the "use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable" appears to recycle the same tactic. If NATO starts bombing Syria, Obama wants us to believe that he's protecting people from chemical weapons, when his real goal is to destroy Syria's government.

Although Syria's chemical weapons do deter an all-out attack from Israel, which is widely believed to be a nuclear power, these weapons are of dubious value in Syria's struggle against foreign jihadists and disaffected Syrians. Syrian airpower is another matter, however. If this were seriously degraded or destroyed, the anti-government forces, what the Western press calls rebels, would have a much better chance of winning.

Another, more sinister possibility is at play, namely, that anti-Syrian terrorists might use chemical weapons, and the Obama administration could then blame Syria's President Assad for this terrorism. Unfortunately, this possibility is credible. Now in chaos, Libya once had chemical weapons. If not destroyed, some of these weapons could have been obtained by the Libyan al-Qaida and then transferred to their lunatic allies in Syria.

Terrorists may already have chemical weapons in Syria. Citing YouTube video, the alternate news site Syria 360° claims that Al-Rih Al-Sarsar has received chemical weapons from Turkish sources and plans to use them.

Fact? Fear? War propaganda? I don't know. But just 10 years ago the Bush administration peddled lies about Saddam Hussein's non-existent nuclear weapons program. Why should we believe Obama?

Obama spoke falsely about health-insurance reform, falsely about his plan to fix the economy and falsely about his involvement in Libya. Indeed, our pathologically mendacious President refused to even admit that he was at war with Libya despite the fact that weapons paid for by at least a billion American tax dollars killed and wounded tens of thousands of Libyans. It's ignorant or insane to trust what Obama says about Syria.

In Counterpunch, the American human rights activist Franklin Lamb reveals that weapons from more than three dozen countries including Great Britain, Israel and the U.S. have been sold to forces trying to destroy Syria's government. According to David Ignatius of the Washington Post, Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist militia tied to al-Qaida, may have as many as 10,000 fighters in Syria. What's going on in Syria is hardly just a fight among Syrians.

The Western political elite attacks Syria to split the country into pieces to strengthen Israel's grasp on that part of the Golan Heights that Israel stole in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and to solidify Israel's status as the region's super power. The aggression against Syria is also about natural gas and closing in on Iran (an oil and natural-gas giant), the next big target for regime change, as well as fencing in China and Russia.

If NATO attacks Syria, it will have nothing to do with chemical weapons or humanitarianism.

We Americans have a right to take reasonable measures to protect our security, but not to elect Dictator of the World.

Neither Obama nor NATO has a right to attack Syria. If an attack occurs, it will be a blatant war crime.